[monster]

So, my MIL is here visiting from the UK. (Banana Lady) She's been here many times. In one sentence she managed to use three phrases that stuck out: Swimming Baths (Pool), Changing room (Locker Room) and Costume (swimsuit). Not that you wouldn't have known what she mean in the main, but the language is that different. So it feels alien. (not unwelcoming, just alien).

Brits see a lot of American movies and TV, and read American books, so they're pretty used to the language, but Americans don't get to see a lot of Brit films unless they seek them out, Brit TV shows are usually dubbed or remade with American actors and books are Americanized before being published here. So Americans don't get an accurate exposure to British English, so it's harder for them to realize how different the language is.

How often in the day do you (Americans) use the word "gotten"? Brits don't (in the main). How often do you use the word regular? Regular sized.... most common use in UK is to describe bowel movements that are not abnormal. We use "normal" when we mean average, everyday, not big or small or unusual in anyway.

...but on to what Sundae is stressing in her post, there are activities and situations in each country that are accepted and perfectly ordinary that in the other country would be totally bizarre. American... Halloween.... I saw ET and thought the Halloween scene in that was just part of the fantasy. Brits -it's not, it's like that and more. Americans, Halloweem in UK is little more than teenage louts demanding money with menace. In the US, there really is steam coming out of the grids in the city streets, and there really are yellow traffic lights strung over the road swaying in the wind. We Brits assume these are romantic elements of America past when we see them in movies. Americans, the thatched cottages you get to see are almost all gone -too big a fire risk, too expensive to maintain. That is a romantic element of England past.....but it sells. I could go on, but I won't.

I love both places, I'm really happy here in America, I don't think the board is unwelcoming to Brits, but it is American in the main.